


Constellation

by Vana



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Current Events, Gen, Military Violence, and graphic depictions of violence, i mean it about character death, this is not a fun story guys!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 19:42:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6390670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The modern-day tragedy of the sons of Seaworth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Constellation

It’s 2012 and Davos has a lighthouse tattooed on his calf. Seven stars fan out from its beacon, four black for the sons who will not return from the dust of Iraq, one red for the son who wanders the red soils of Chile questing for enlightenment, and two as yet uncolored for the boys at home, too young to go find trouble and loss and death. The lighthouse is bricked in white with a mahogany-colored door, and on the door, a flaming heart.

\--

It’s 2013 and Davos has not heard from Devan for six months. Who’d have thought that his dutiful, sand-haired fifth child would turn into the mystic, journeying through South America with a pocketful of peyote buttons and a faded black cowboy hat like something right out of a Tom Robbins novel? It wasn’t only because of the war, but Davos never knew the rest of it until after his son was gone, on the plane to Santiago with the last of the money from his last summer job. Marya read Devan’s journal after he left and it was incomprehensible to Davos – how his wife could have betrayed her boy’s privacy, and also what that boy had written down. It was so incomprehensible to Davos – who was not an academic man – that he sometimes felt he knew his dead sons better than the eldest left living.

_An open channel waits in the middle of the white wastes_  
_waits where the sand turns grey from red_  
_in the ocean and the ruins stone comes to life_  
_and patterned on its face, the space between_  


Davos knew what Allard would say. “Going to read at some hipster open mic, Dev?” he would smirk. That was just before he’d hop on his Vespa and head downtown. If he’d never met that girl who liked mopeds and who introduced her pious sister to Dale, if he’d never let her talk Dale into joining up, if he’d never let himself believe he could just sit in a cool office and tap in messages all day – but no, Davos couldn’t fall down that counterfactual hole again. It’d be a better use of his time to find that open door in the South American deserts, arrange Devan’s words like magnetic fridge poetry into something that made more sense, gather his two remaining sons and Marya, and take them all through.

\--

It's 2014 and Marya has given up on Devan. You can't say his name to her lest she dissolve into tears, then silence for days. Davos throws himself into his two sons' lives. Works like a dog to make their lives happy and good. Raises money for one to go on an exchange program to Paris for six months. Enrolls the younger in sports. It's too early to say, but the competitive streak of Allard and Maric lives on in little Stanny. Davos sometimes can smile watching him play. And he likes to listen to Steffon practice French. What a beautiful language, Marya says, with one of her even rarer smiles. What a beautiful country you'll be seeing.

\--

It's 2015 and _je suis Paris_ , except no one is Paris and no one is anyone anymore. There is no one, now, who is Steffon Seaworth -- he was on his exchange program and happened to be at a rock concert into which men exploded themselves like fireworks, the stars of independence shattering what's left of the arrogance of the Parisian street scene. Steff was found virtually intact, and for that his parents were grateful -- his face still his face, only his chest and arm gone, the red-black hole through which his brothers disappeared growing wider and wider.

"When will it end?" Marya wails, whispers. "What did they die for?" They: every son, every one but the last.

Steffon Seaworth is no one. 

Davos often thinks he's no one, too.

\--

It's 2016 and Davos and Marya are parents of an only child. A sullen little thing, everyone understands, six brothers before him killed and no more to come. The last little baby now half a child, half a man, shouldering the weight of all seven sons on his bony frame, looking out at the world seeing no meaning -- seeing only aggression, only fear, only loss.

Devan is lost. Dale shot down in a helicopter, with a Bible tucked behind his stiffened knees. Allard, suicide after one too many orphanage bombings, one too many babies held in those strong tattooed arms. Maric and Matthos, land mines. Together, at least. Their death certificates arrived in one envelope.

And Stannis? Baby Stanny? The fierce light in his eyes burns so brightly it sometimes scares his parents. Then fades, then it kindles again. He speaks little. Diagnoses come and go. Stanny fails medical tests, passes hard classes. Stanny is petted and neglected as Davos and Marya's grief ebbs and flows.

The tattooed stars all go black as the long-ago ink bleeds into itself on Davos' aging leg. The muscle fails. The man falls. 

The son grieves. Over the western waters the sunset slides into the waves. A red star alights on the horizon. 

Stannis Seaworth rises alone.


End file.
